Hillside Golf Club transform fortunes to win double number five

THE double is being celebrated on Merseyside, not alas in the world of soccer, at Anfield and Goodison, but within the golfing community, in “England’s Golfing Capital” the superb links of the Sefton Coast. Hillside has won the double, the Southport and District Golf Association Winter League Championship of 2010-11 and the Scratch Team Tournament of 2011. It is a remarkable achievement. For one reason Hillside have now won the double five times. For another it represents a dramatic turnaround in the team’s fortune. “This is the first time we have won the league in ten years,” says Rob Godley, team manager. “In the glory years from 1976-1999 we were very successful. Then we won nothing. Now we have shed the period of being in the doldrums. I am delighted.” He lives on the Fylde coast and makes the 30 miles two-way journey to play regularly at Hillside where he has been a member for more than 40 years. He has been involved with the SDGA since 1976. The association dates back to 1968, the idea of the late Joe Moore, then Sports Editor of the Southport Visiter series of newspapers. His objective was to encourage inter-club competitive golf in the winter months, leaving players free to play the busy programme of events in the summer.